The psychology of 'sharenting': Why parents can't resist talking about their kids online — and what experts say about it
I’ve never met Lucy Huber, but I (and the more than 70,000 other people who follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter) know about her 3-year-old’s obsession with trains, the funny thing he said yesterday, the color of the tennis shoes he picked out a year ago and how he feels about his new baby sister. For many parents, sharing such information online isn’t unusual. It’s “sharenting.”
“I’ve been sharing tweets about my kids since before I had kids because my Twitter just kind of organically leaned that way after I started trying to get pregnant,” Huber tells Yahoo Life via email. “I’ve always tweeted about my life, so when I started doing IVF and then got pregnant and then had a baby, my tweets just kind of centered around those things. But I think my tweets about parenthood are really what made my account popular.”
What is ‘sharenting’?
“Sharenting” entered the modern lexicon in the early 2010s and usually refers to parents sharing stories, pictures or videos about their kids on social media. However, everyone has a slightly different take on what exactly “sharenting” means.
Devorah Heitner, author of Growing Up in Public, tells Yahoo Life that “‘sharenting’ is sharing about our kids or about our parenting experiences on social media.” Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, a clinical psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts goes one step further to differentiate “sharenting” as a range of behaviors that includes everything from social media influencers whose daily lives with their children become monetized content, to parents posting news about achievements that they want to share with family and friends, such as back-to-school photos, to parents posting universal observations about parenting in which their kids remain anonymous.
However, Leah Plunkett, author of Sharenthood and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, defines it much more broadly as “all the ways that parents and also grandparents, teachers, aunts, uncles, coaches and other trusted adults transmit children’s private information digitally.” This includes everything from social media posts to personal information collected in online apps and forms, and devices like fitness trackers with geolocation. For her, social media posts are an important part of “sharenting,” but the behavior isn’t limited to Instagram and other apps.
Why we do it
A sense of connection is what drives most parents to “sharent.” One parent’s anecdote about their toddler adorably mispronouncing a word might strike a chord with others, or parents may find relief and community in commiserating over challenges like teething, sleepless nights and calls from the school nurse.
“I really love how much I’ve connected with other parents,” says Huber. “I love that I can make people laugh through my experiences and create a place where everyone can see what parenting is really like. I love when I tweet something and people follow up with their own similar stories. It makes me feel less alone in a thing that feels so, so lonely sometimes.”
“Our world is increasingly digital, and people don’t live super close to their family and friends, so it’s a way to stay connected to people you don’t see every day and gives them a window into their kids’ lives,” Sinclair-McBride adds.
Like all social media usage, “sharenting” also offers psychological rewards. “When you get likes or comments or get a lot of views, there is a little dopamine hit, and I think people are chasing that,” Sinclair-McBride tells Yahoo Life. “On the more negative side, there’s this need for attention and to feel special, and it’s hard in everyday life for people to get those needs met, so trying to create viral content or ‘sharent’ in a really big, public way could be a way to get some positive attention.”
The downside of ‘sharenting’
“Sharenting” can also attract negative attention, especially for parents like Huber with many followers. “My tweets go viral a lot, which means a lot of people who have no context about me or our lives see them and I think that can lead to a lot of really negative comments,” she says.
Sometimes the comments of trolls are so ridiculous they make her laugh, like the user who chastised her for watching Bones in the hospital the day after her daughter was born, arguing that kids under 2 shouldn’t have screen time. “Silly things like that don’t really get to me because I know either a) they aren’t parents or b) they [are] just looking for a fight,” Huber says. “But there have been a few times things made me log off because I was so hurt by them.” Recently, she took a six-week break for her mental health after her daughter was born.
“The downside [of ‘sharenting’] is getting involved in comparison culture with other parents, and your kid’s basic trust with you and at home being violated,” Heitner says. If a parent posts a video of their child dancing around in their underwear or doing something else silly and meant for a small, family-sized audience, home no longer feels like a safe space. “You shouldn’t have to worry that your parents are going to share that or tell stories about you,” she notes. “You may find it cute, and your kid may find it violating.”
Sinclair-McBride encourages parents to ask themselves if their child feels like they have any privacy. “Does it seem like everything they are going to do is going to be used for content?" she says. “Can they tell you a joke or have a hard moment without it being a part of the brand?”
For this reason, the psychological toll of “sharenting” on children is lumped under the larger umbrella category of privacy concerns, which experts use to discuss everything from a child’s right to privacy to their data security.
In terms of data security, Plunkett wants parents to understand that their social media gives away data in two big categories. The first is everything the parent shares online in words, pictures and videos. The second is the “backstage data”: the data collection occurring within the background of apps.
Between the two, Plunkett believes what parents say “onstage” is the bigger security risk. “Today’s social media platforms give parents the digital equivalent of taking out a billboard with their kid’s private information at the side of every highway in every country around the world now and indefinitely,” she says.
Is there a healthy way to ‘sharent’?
Despite the risks, parents live in a digital world, and they are social creatures who want to connect. “The challenge is, how do we balance our need for connection with our kids’ need and right to privacy?” Heitner says.
To do this, all three experts encourage parents to adopt smarter ways to “sharent.”
Social media accounts should be private. “[This is] not a guarantee of greater privacy but it does put up some speed bumps in terms of information getting into the hands of bad actors,” Sinclair-McBride says. Keeping an account private can also keep the social circle smaller, which may make children more comfortable with what their parents are sharing, says Heitner.
“Think about the types of things you post,” Sinclair-McBride adds. Parents shouldn’t post children’s embarrassing moments, struggles or them being disciplined. Also, parents should “never ever post any pictures or videos of their child in any state of undress, even if it is an innocent family day at the beach.” According to Plunkett, they also shouldn’t post “their children’s exact date of birth or full names or middle names because those are pieces of information that can be of interest to identity thieves.”
Parents should also get consent in an age-appropriate way before posting. “Show them what you post, and if they don’t like it, take [it] down [because] that’s their body or their thoughts,” says Sinclair-McBride. Plunkett also believes older children should have veto power, explaining that “[they] may have dynamics going on in their schools or their lives where a post that seems fine to you may be embarrassing to them.”
Lastly, parents should also make sure they aren’t spending more time “sharenting” than actual parenting. “Sometimes keep your phone in your purse or pocket and [do] not have it be a part of the activity,” says Sinclair-McBride.
“We don’t want to parent-shame," Heitner says. “Even if you haven’t taken a robustly considerate approach to ‘sharenting’ in the past, it’s not too late to change behavior.”
